The Character of Orestes in Sophocles’ Electra

Croiset (36) complained that Aristophanes had missed the true danger of sophistic education because he depicted the corruption of a country lad instead of a young aristocrat in the Clouds:

Had the poet really cared for the interests of the aristocracy, so far as they were connected with the interests of society, or had any of his patrons made them clear to him, he ought to have tried to open the eyes of his fellow citizens to this serious and really fatal error. And then he would have had to represent, not a good fellow from the country, as the victim of the sophists, but rather the descendant of some great family, as reduced by them and undermining the moral inheritance of his race through selfish ambition.

Croiset could have been describing Orestes in the Electra.

Like the Philoctetes, which is universally recognized to be concerned with the question of education, the Electra begins with the entrance of a teacher and his young charge. In neither the Choephoroi nor Euripides’ Electra does the Paedagogus contribute even a fraction as much to the story as he does in Sophocles’ Electra. Yet the relationship between the young Orestes and the Paedagogus, which is explicitly developed in the play, has received little attention. Those who have commented on the figure of the Paedagogus judge him harshly.¹³

The prologue establishes two important facts: 1) Orestes was raised, perhaps from infancy, for no other purpose than to be prepared to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus at the right moment, and 2) Apollo’s will is of very little importance for Orestes. His true motivation, implanted by the Paedagogus, is a sophistic combination of self-glory, a utilitarian view of social justice, and the urgent sense, encouraged by the Paedagogus, that the for action has arrived.

As if to underline how completely Orestes is his creation, the Paedagogus uses an important metaphor derived from sophistic educational theory when he recalls his service for Orestes. At 13-14, he says ἤνεγκακἀξέσωσακἀξεθρεψάμηντοσόνδ᾽ἐςἥβης, πατρὶτιμωροφόνου. Beginning with the assumption that human was no more than bare substratum, mere potential, the sophists argued that it could be channeled into an infinite variety of directions with teaching and diligence. Though the vocabulary is somewhat flexible, there existed among the sophistic thinkers a trinity of elements required for the crafting of souls (See Shorey): natural ability (), diligence (), and training or lessons (). In this system, had been emptied of the aristocratic presumption of natural excellence and reduced to raw potential or mere receptivity -- and anyone, regardless of his social class, could possess a strong . To bring all the conditions together for successful education, a remarkable analogy was drawn between education of the young and the act of raising a crop in agriculture that enjoyed a wide-spread popularity in the late fifth-century (Protagoras, Great Speech D.K. 80 b3; D.K. 80 b11).¹⁴ The best fifth-century evidence we have for it is Hippocr. Nomos 3, and this fragment of Antiphon (D.K. 87 b60):

“As one sows, so can one expect to reap. And if in a young body one sows a noble education, this lives and flourishes through the whole of his life, and neither rain nor drought destroys it” (tr. Freeman).

It is significant here that in this analogy the child is not equated with the seed but the soil. That is, the child does not have any innate code of development it will follow. In this analogy, the child is nurture for the idea or planted in it. The nature of the soil merely acts as a limit on the amount of the yield.

It is quite apparent that Sophocles manipulates the chronology of the myth, which requires Orestes to be about 18 to 20 years old, and he is possibly doing so in order to confirm this analogy.  The Paedagogos says that he “took” Orestes from Electra and “raised him up” (13). One scholiast comments that the verb “ἤνεγκα suggests that Orestes was literally passed into the Paedagogos’ arms since Orestes was, according to the note, “not yet able to walk.” Again, at 603, Electra uses the verb when she tells Clytemnestra that if she had been able, she would have raised Orestes herself as a . The verb implies a relationship more nearly approaching that of a mother and child than brother and sister; hence Electra must have last seen Orestes when he was much younger than his early teens. Electra also remembers affectionately how Orestes called her (1148). There is hardly anything exceptional about an eleven or twelve year old boy saying “sister,” but if Orestes were just old enough to speak, it would explain why the memory is still so touching and vivid for Electra. After the Paedagogos’ fictitious tale about Orestes’ death, Clytemnestra is struck for a moment by a deeply felt sorrow and mourns her child (776), “Gone from my breasts and nourishment.” Clytemnestra last remembers Orestes as a nursing infant, not as an eleven or twelve year-old boy. Certainly, none of these observations taken by itself proves conclusively that Sophocles is trying to alter the chronology of the myth, but their collective force is strong. Judging from the results, at least, he succeeded, as many commentators on the Electra feel that Orestes was taken away from Mycenae at a much younger age than the logic of the myth allows.¹⁵

He learned his lessons deeply. Orestes is marked throughout as completely subordinate to his master. “No way!” the Paedagogus snaps at 82 when Orestes asks whether they should stay behind to investigate cries coming from off-stage.¹⁶ After Orestes and Electra have been celebrating their reunion, the Paedagogus bursts in and sternly scolds them for carrying on (1326): ὦ πλεῖστα μῶροι καὶ φρενῶν τητώμενοι. At 15, the Paedagogus addresses Pylades, “.” Eight lines later at 23, mimicking his master, Orestes repeats “.” The Paedagogus constantly urges Orestes to action by stressing that the has arrived. The Paedagogus’ word at 22 is repeated by Orestes at 31, 39, and at 75-6. The Paedagogus frequently uses the root to indicate that a plan is clear, or that knowledge is obvious, and so forth. At 18, he says the sounds of the birds are . Orestes repeats at 23 in the same position in the line, and again at 41, again at the same position in the line. After the recognition scene the Paedagogus urges Orestes and Pylades to act (1335): καὶ νῦν ἀπαλλαχθέντε τῶν μακρῶν λόγων. At 1353, Orestes turns to his sister and warns her not to question him further, imitating his teacher’s impatience with excessive speech: ὅδ᾽ ἐστί: μή μ᾽ ἔλεγχε πλείοσιν λόγοις. Finally, Orestes turns to Pylades at v. 1372 and quotes nearly verbatim the Paedagogus’ earlier advice: οὐκ ἀ μακρῶν ἔθ᾽ ἡμι οὐδε ἀ λόγων. Since he was trained from infancy for no other purpose than to avenge his father, we cannot even say that Orestes was corrupted by the Paedagogus, since that suggests a warping or perversion of an innate shape. He was created from nothing to be what he is the play: a cold-blooded, unthinking killer.¹⁷